Wednesday, 6pm
by tyleroswald
Summary: After being caught in a lie, Jessica comes home just to find her father - Tony Stark - waiting for her, sitting in the living room with crossed arms.


J: Hi dad.

T: _Where_ are you?

J: I'm at… Spanish class.

T: Pepper told me you quit Spanish class 6 weeks ago.

J: No, _I_ told you I quit Spanish class 6 weeks ago!

T: Oh, yeah?

J: Shit! I gotta go.

T: _Hey!_

Wednesday, 6 pm. I walked home quietly and hoped my father wasn't around. Lights were off and I was stepping on the tip of my toes so I wouldn't make any noise and quickly go upstairs right into my bedroom.

"Jarvis?" I whispered so he would notice that I wanted him to be as quiet as possible too. "Jarvis, c'mon, help me out."

The lights were off and the house was in silence. The place seemed empty. Okay, so next step was going out of the hall and into the living room. Just one foot after the other. One foot after the-

The lights went on. An angry-faced Tony Stark was sitting on the couch. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and he was still wearing a suit, but by his tired face and the state of his clothes, it seemed like he had slept in that couch for a while. He didn't even go to bed? Shit.

I was paralyzed for a few seconds before standing again with my whole feet on the floor. The plan was to pretend nothing happened, or at least that I wasn't that much screwed. So I just kept walking forward, slightly turning to the direction of the staircase as I nodded with a fake smile to him. "Hey, dad. Great to see you're home."

"Where do you think you're going?" He questioned, not even looking at me directly.

"Hm, bed? It's late already, don't you think? I have a... test tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep."

"No, you don't. Actually, I don't _care_ if you do. Because you, little lady, are going to tell me _right now_ where were you earlier when I called."

"At school." I answered perhaps a bit too quickly.

"Yeah, Spanish class? You think you can fool me just as easily?"

"I'm not fooling you." I looked down at my shoes while letting out the words with a low voice.

"C'mon," He patted the fabric of the couch next to him and leaned his head in a quick movement to the side as if calling me. "talk to me." His expression softened from angry to just tired.

I still hesitated for a few seconds.

"Hey, don't turn this into something difficult for both of us. I'm trying to have a conversation here as in a healthy father-daughter relationship. I wanna be friends with you again. This..." He gesticulated pointing to the both of us. "is an improvement, don't you agree?"

My brow raised and my lips formed a smile in response, as an agreement. I threw my backpack on the armchair next to the couch and sat close to him. "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth? Where were you today?"

"Well, I _did_ go to school. That wasn't a lie." I affirmed, looking at him. I did go to school, but it just got boring. That was something that happened very frequently nowadays. All subjects seemed to be moving too slow, so I'd rather study at home with J.A.R.V.I.S and show up mostly to tests because I was way ahead on the topic of study.

"Yeah, but?" He continued and grabbed his cell phone once it started ringing. Oddly, he didn't answer the call as he usually would. Instead, he put the cell back in his pocket, turning his attention back to me. This was a Tony Stark that I didn't see in a while. He was actually interested in what I had to say. And he had waited for me to get home.

He was being a father. That's something we don't see every day. Not openly like that.

"But..." My words echoed his and my mouth hung open as my eyes drifted around the room, scanning everywhere but the man in front of me. There was a pizza box in the small glass center table. "You brought pizza from New York. How bad was the board meeting?"

Tony let out a snort, visibly tired, passing his hand over his face and letting it rest on his beard. "Worse than I thought it'd be. Actually, there's something I need to discuss with you - Stark Industries related. But after you cut the bullshit on avoiding the question I asked you."

"Yeah, right." I straightened myself up on the couch. "I was betting on BattleBots."

He lifted his right eyebrow. "That's no big deal." There was this silence between us for a couple of seconds. "Is that it?" The man let out a relieved sigh and clapped his hands once. "I thought you were on drugs, or drinking, or having sex, or... something just as bad. But if that's it then I dunno why we're even having this conversation, for a start. Actually, I think I should give you some advice on it - tell me, did you win?"

"And it was on a casino in Santa Monica with Zeke." I laid out the rest of the information and waited to see how it would settle. I knew he probably wouldn't care about the bot stuff and if I had to guess he'd probably joined a few before. But casinos and Ezekiel Stane were matters he had trouble with before and I knew he was a bit worried about having me around both.

The smile that rested on his face disappeared in confusion. "You mean Zeke... _Zeke_?"

I answered with a nod.

"You still talk to him? I thought he hated everything related to us after- you know."

Oh, I did know. Actually, the death of Obadiah Stane had been on the news for several weeks, even though the press was telling a fake story. Despite the stress of having someone in the family dying again, the circumstances of how it happened were even worse. I do wonder how my dad processed all of this. Pepper and I tried the most to make the house stress-free for as long as possible for everyone's sake. I remember coming home from school and spending the entire day down at the workshop with Tony because we knew he usually put his repressed feelings into inventions. And it was one of the times I learned most about physics and how the mechanism of the Iron Man suit worked so far.

I never really liked Uncle Obadiah, and now my feelings were all mixed on how I felt about him. Of course, I felt guilty when he died cause I never really tried to get close to him. Otherwise, he did actually try to kill my dad and Pepper, and they meant the world to me. So, if doing what dad did was the only way of stopping him, it was basically just a casualty, right? Self-defence move. Except it doesn't feel like that. Not even slightly.

So long story short, Ezekiel Stane, Obadiah's son, didn't even look at my father's face after what happened. He actually forbade both of us from his father's funeral. Yet he still talked to me, and our relationship seemed pretty much the same. He was just as nice and funny as usual.

"I do. But actually, we're fine." I shrugged. Honestly, I didn't really have any complaints that I still got to keep my friend.

Tony crossed his arms and stared at the center table while the words first came out of his mouth, finishing the sentence by looking at me. "You thought 'bout the possibility that he might be using you, right?"

"To get to you? It's not his style, really." It did sound like a bad idea to me. Zeke was family, he wouldn't hurt us.

But well, so was his father.

"Industrial espionage wasn't yours but you helped me on the Gillespies." He pointed out.

"That was... " different, I was going to say. But dad had a point, nevertheless. "Okay. But I still don't think that's it. We were just having fun."

"J, you need to get away from him. Listen to me, just once." He gesticulated toward me and I could notice at his eyes that he was genuinely concerned.

"Yeah, but he is family, dad! His own father died and now we're leaving him behind?"

"Honey…" He passed his hand over his face again. "Look, l didn't want to be like my father because I hated so many things about him, yet here I am doing a lot of things the way he used to. I'm sure you hear many times that you do some things like me too. You didn't deliberately want to imitate me, and neither did I with grandpa. And maybe neither does Zeke. But we can't argue over both nurture and nature." He laid the facts as I crossed my arms while we spoke.

"And why should we judge him for something he hasn't done yet?"

"Because I'm your father and I call the shots on what's best for your safety, get over it."

"Nice way of avoiding an argument you didn't have an answer for." I snorted. "And I can decide what's best for me. In less than a year I'll have the legal age to drive and well, if I can drive a vehicle, then I sure can make decisions on my own."

"Oh, you're talking about decisions now? So why don't you do something about school? Jessica, you're skipping classes to bet on robot fights in casinos. You're clearly smart enough to skip another year and study something more challenging. Actually, properly, _learn_ something." He started the lecture while I stared at the piano, close to the glass wall, from a distance. "I'm worried because when I was your age-"

"You were already at MIT. I know. People tend to never let me forget about that." I rolled my eyes as I cut him off his speech.

"I want you to be there already as well!" He threw his hands in the air. "I don't understand why you keep avoiding it. You know, I made a full research on all top universities around the world with detailed info about courses, accommodations and their status. It's all done, you just need to sit and decide. Jarvis, send the spreadsheet and the documents to Jessica."

I took a deep breath. I had been avoiding this MIT thing for as long as possible. Since Tony is who he is, people tend to assume that I must be like him. But they never asked me, you know? Okay, I do like working with him and maybe I'll end up in engineering anyway. But why no one stop took the time to actually ask what I wanted to do in college?

Like, it's already weird that I'm 15 years old and almost in last year of high school. I'm always the one who's too young to have a say on group works, so I prefer to do things my way. Also because working alone is so much easier and faster.

Except for a few friends I've made along the way, all students from my classes were a pain in the ass. I've even made an arrangement with a few teachers so they let me spend time in the lab or doing whatever I wanted as long as I'll give them a bunch of papers about the classes there were teaching that day.

"If you choose MIT, you know you're gonna have my full support and we can even back your projects at the company." He kept on saying.

I pressed my lips as I looked at him. Oh yes, the company. All of Tony's shares and actions would be mine someday and I would become the CEO of Stark Industries. There it was - my future - all decided for me, laid out like a road I was supposed to follow. Though I hadn't figured it out how to win this battle. Maybe, if I'd play along, I could try to change the course of action while inside the whole mess? Seemed like somewhere to start.

My father had stopped talking somewhere along my line of thought. He had been staring at me waiting for an answer, and by his look, he had been waiting for a little bit too long.

"Alright." I raised up my hands on surrender gesture. "I'll take a look at your spreadsheet."

He smiled, proud. Probably proud of himself.

"I'll be more careful around Zeke as well." I continued. It was something I was actually going to consider. And "being more careful" could be shaped into a lot of things.

"You'll send me a heads-up whenever you're with him. Or send Pep somethin'. I just wanna know you're okay." He stopped talking for a while, his hand frozen in the air for a couple of seconds. "Better yet, you'll send either of us a message in the span of two hours when you're with him. If I don't get a proof you're fine I'll put on the suit and I'll go after you."

I closed my eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Dad-"

"Cut it. There's no 'dad' or counter-argument on this. It's either that or you're forbidden to talk to him." His voice was serious. "Which I know it'd only be more exhausting for both of us."

" 'kay." I agreed, looking down, not really happy with all this.

He stood up, his jacket in one hand and the other on his pocket. "See? We can still solve things without yelling at each other, Pepper was right."

"God, I should've recorded that," I smirked, grabbing my backpack and standing up as well.

He giggled. "Glad you didn't." And as he walked toward the stairs, he stopped and looked back at me. "Listen, I'm gonna rest for a couple of hours and I was thinking that we could watch that TV show you were talking about last week. It's a shame you gotta go to bed because you have a test tomorrow, _right_?"

I smiled broadly while he spoke, but it disappeared at the end of his sentence. I quirked a brow and spoke in a sarcastic tone. "Oh, yeah. This _big_ test. I'm sure it sounded completely real back then."

Tony just smiled with both his mouth and eyes. I smiled back and we just stared at each other for a few seconds. We didn't get along all the time but when we did, I just absolutely loved it.

"I'll tell JARVIS to wake you up and meet me in the cinema room then."

He winked in response and made his way up the stairs. I took a deep breath and looked around, making my way to my room afterwards. "Jarvis, can you get someone to bring us some snacks later?"

" _Certainly, ma'am. As you wish."_


End file.
